Community ReLeaf

Launched in 2013, Community ReLeaf is dedicated to the assessment, restoration and monitoring of urban forests.

As part of this program, American Forests identifies cities that could benefit from an analysis of their urban forests — or aspects of their urban forests — based on research and conversations with urban forest managers. Then, each year, a handful of cities are selected as “project sites” for that year’s Community ReLeaf activities. Once selected each project site undergoes three distinct phases: urban forest assessment, restoration, and outreach and education.

Reaching geographically distributed and culturally diverse communities, Community ReLeaf aims to bring national attention to the value of our urban forests.

Program Partners

Current Project Cities

Future Project Cities

American Forests’ goal for this program is to partner over multiple years with 20 cities by 2020.

American Forests is currently requesting proposals in the hopes of selecting three new cities to participate in the Community ReLeaf initiative and to help in achieving the organization’s goal. The proposals will allow communities to illustrate the stories of their urban forests. The three criteria that American Forests assesses in selecting cities are:

Current capacities and needs in local urban forest policy management

State of existing collaboration between local nonprofit organizations involved in urban forestry and city, county and state governments

How a strategic investment of American Forests’ financial and technical resources could tangibly improve long-term management of the local urban forest